WINWHEEL is a Wheel of Fortune word guessing game.
The goal of the game is to guess a phrase
which is visually depicted by blank boxes for each character in the phrase. A hint is
presented under the puzzle to give the flavor of the phrase. The contestant or PLAYER may:
- Spin the wheel to guess a consonant. The player spins
by pressing the WINWHEEL button at the center of the wheel, and presses one of the
consonants in the popup window.
- Buy a vowel for $250. The player must have at least
$250. The player presses the BUY VOWEL button to the left of the wheel, and then presses
one of the 5 VOWEL buttons.
- Guess the puzzle. The player presses the GUESS PUZZLE
button to the left of the wheel and a GUESS PUZZLE box opens to receive the player's
guess.
When the player spins the
wheel and correctly identifies a consonant in the puzzle, his score is increased by the
current value of the wheel times the number of times that the consonant appears in the
puzzle. The player may then continue his turn using one of the three play options above.
If the consonant does not appear, the play continues with the next contestant.
When the player buys a vowel, his score is
decreased by $250. It does not matter how many times the vowel appears in the puzzle. The
player may not buy a vowel if he does not have at least $250 - NO CREDIT! As with
consonants, if the vowel is not present in the puzzle, then play continues with the next
contestant. There are 6 Rounds in the game, with increasing money values on the wheel in
later Rounds. Rounds 1 & 2 have a space marked FREE SPIN. The player collects a FREE
SPIN marker which he may use later in the game to maintain control of the wheel if the
letter or vowel guessed is not in the puzzle, or if the wheel ends up on LOSE TURN or
BANKRUPT. BANKRUPT causes the player to lose
all of his money for the Round. He does not lose any money won in previous Rounds. Only
the top scorer in each Round keeps his money for that Round. Rounds 3, 4, 5, & 6 are
made more difficult by having two BANKRUPT positions on the wheel, but no FREE SPINS. If
at any time during a player's turn, a player thinks that he knows the puzzle, then he may
press the GUESS PUZZLE button and make his guess. The player may not guess after first
deciding to spin the wheel. If he spins, then he must guess a consonant.
Be careful as you type, since spelling counts.
An incorrect guess causes the control of the wheel to be passed to the next player. A
correct guess causes all player's scores to be reset to 0 for the next Round. The player
with the
highest score after six Rounds
wins the game. The Player may at any time view the available vowels and consonants using
the View Consonants & View Vowels option. Have
Fun!
The WINWHEEL editor.
INTRODUCTION
The WINWHEEL editor allows the user to add,
delete, or modify puzzles in
the database file called WINWHEEL.DAT. You may
run the editor as a
stand-alone program in Windows, or access the
program while playing
WINWHEEL, just in case you find a spelling
error that you wish to correct.
Search
The search feature allows you to search for
the existence of a puzzle in the
database. When this button is pressed, a
yellow window pops up. You may
type in a puzzle and press OK to start the
search or Cancel button if you
change your mind. You may type the puzzle in
all upper case, all lower
case, or a mixture of upper and lower case.
You may include punctuation
marks such as periods ".",
apostrophe's " ' ", and ampersand "&" characters
if required.
With the registered version of WINWHEEL with
over 12,000
puzzles, the search may take a few minutes if
the puzzle is near the end of
the database or is not in the database at all.
If the puzzle is found, then a
green editing window will apear. You may click
your mouse in the
Category box or in the Puzzle box and change
the text. Press OK to
accept the changes. You may choose to delete
the puzzle using the Delete
button or Cancel if you wish to make no
changes to either the Puzzle or
Category.
Note: Puzzles are limited to a maximum of 40
characters including any
spaces or punctuation marks, and the Category
is limited to 20 characters.
You will be prompted if either of these
conditions occurs.
Add New Puzzle
You may add new puzzles to the database by
pressing this button on the
main EDITWHEEL window. A green window will pop
up. The cursor will
be an "I-beam" cursor in the
Category box. Type in the Category (Phrase,
Quotation, Person, Place, Thing, Fictional
Character, etc.). Now move your
mouse cursor to the Puzzle box and click the
left button once, or use the
TAB key on the keyboard to move to this box.
Type in your puzzle. When
you have typed in both the Category and
Puzzle, then you may click on the
Add button. The new puzzle will be compared to
the database to search
for duplication. If a duplicate is found then
you will receive an error
message, and you may type in a new puzzle and
category or press the
Canbutton to close the Add New Puzzle window.
Puzzles will always be
added to the end of the database, and so will
appear in the Browser as the
very last entry.
Browse
If there are less than 12 puzzles in the
database, this button will be
disabled.
The Browse button will open a spreadsheet
displaying the first 12 puzzles in
the database. The menu options duplicate the
Search and Add New Puzzle
options of the main EDITWHEEL program window,
and adds an option to
Go To a specific puzzle if you know it's entry
number.
You may browse through the database using the
buttons at the
bottom of the spreadsheet. They function as
follows:
Up button: Moves the spreadsheet up by one
entry, that is the new top
entry will one less than the currently
displayed top item.
Dn button: Moves the spreadsheet down by one
entry, that is the new top
entry will be one more than the current top
item.
Pg Up button: Moves the spreadsheet up by one
page (one page = 12
entries).
Pg Dn button: Moves the spreadsheet down by
one page.
Home button: Displays the entries from 1 to
12.
End button: Displays the last 12 entries in
the database.
When you see an entry that you wish to modify,
click your mouse
on the number button at the left side of the
entry. A green pop-up window
will let you make changes as in the Search
option when a puzzle is found.
Press the change button when done editing the
Puzzle or Category entries,
Delete button to delete the puzzle, or Cancel
button to leave the puzzle
unchanged.
When a puzzle is deleted, the last puzzle in
the database replaces
the current puzzles number, and the total
number of puzzles is reduced by
one entry. This method speeds the process of
deleting a puzzle without
having to rewrite the database to disk with
all entires following the one you
deleted.
You may leave the Browse spreadsheet either by
pressing the Done
button or the Exit option on the menu.
Quit
This button on the main EDITWHEEL window will
end the program. You
will see the Wheel spin, and the EDITWHEEL
window will close.
CREATING A NEW DATABASE
At this time, WINWHEEL does not support
multiple databases. If you would like to create a new custom database, (such as one
specific to teaching a course
in school, religious phrases, etc), this can
be accomodated by deleting the
WINWHEEL.DAT file and then running the
EDITWHEEL program from its icon. You
will not be able to use the Browse database
utiltity until there are at least
12 puzzles in the database.
TROUBLESHOOTING
1. Either searching a puzzle, or adding a
puzzle locks up the computer: The
computer is most likely not locked up, but the
searching and comparison
processes do take a long time with a database
as extensive as in the
WINWHEEL registered version. You can speed
this process up by copying
EDITWHEE.EXE and WINWHEEL.DAT to a RAM DRIVE
if you have one.
Searching will be much quicker since the reads
take place from memory
rather than from the hard drive. Hard drive
access is slow, whereas
memory access is very fast. If you do use a
RAM DRIVE with EDITWHEEL,
remember to copy the WINWHEEL.DAT file back to
your hard drive when
done editing. It is recommended that you do
not run EDITWHEEL from a
floppy disk.
2. I've deleted all the puzzles in the
database and now EDITWHEE.EXE
crashes: At this time, EDITWHEEL does not
support the creation of new
databases. This option is being considered for
a future release of
WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL.
SETUP
A) Shareware version of WINWHEEL and
EDITWHEEL:
If you installed WINWHEEL from the shareware
version (unregistered
version for evaluation), then you may wish to
add an icon to one of your
GROUPS in FILE MANAGER in WINDOWS 3.0 or 3.1.
The procedure is
simple and applies to adding an icon for any
program used under Windows.
1. Open the program group where you wish the
EDITWHEEL icon to
appear. To do this, just double-click the left
mouse button on the group
of your choice (you may have a GAMES group,
for example).
2. Now from the PROGRAM MANAGER menu at top
left, select the File
option and a drop down menu appears.
3. Select New...
4. Select Program Item and click on the OK
button.
5. Now you can either:
i) type in the Drive:\Path\filename.ext in the
Command Line box and
press the OK button. Also type in the
Drive:\Path in the Working
Directory box.
or
ii) Click on the Browse key and change to the
drive and subdirectory
where you installed WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL,
and select the
EDITWHEE.EXE file. Click on OK ,and then OK
once more to add
the icon for EDITWHEEL to your GAMES group.
B) Registered Version 1.5 or later:
1. The automatic install program is run from
Program Manager by selecting
File...
2. Select Run...
3. Type in the drive name where you have
inserted the registered
distribution disk (labelled Disk 1: Setup
Disk) followed by SETUP.EXE
and press Enter on the keyboard.
4. When asked where to install WINWHEEL and
EDITWHEEL, type in the
drive name and path (default is C:\WINWHEEL)
and press the OK
button.
5. The setup program will create a group
called WINWHEEL and create
the WINWHEEL icon and EDITWHEEL icon.
6. You may use the click and drag features of
Windows if you wish to
move these icons to another group, such as
your GAMES group if you
have one. You can delete the WINWHEEL group
after moving the icons
to another group by simply pressing the Delete
key on your keyboard
when the WINWHEEL group is the active, open
group, and answer Yes
to delete the group.
EDITING THE WINWHEEL DATABASE
Start the editor (referred to as EDITWHEEL
here) by double-clicking the
left button on the EDITWHEEL icon in your
WINWHEEL or GAMES
group, or by clicking once on the Editor menu
option in WINWHEEL.
There are 4 buttons on the main EDITWHEEL
window:
1. Search
2. Add New Puzzle
3. Browse
4. Quit
WINWHEEL and EDITWHEEL are copyrighted
programs programs of:
Russell Mueller
507 Washington Gdns
Washington, NJ 07882-9205
USA
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